Google POWA!

Google have recently announced their power usage, this is the power in which gGoogle require to run the servers that allow us to use their services, such as Google searches, Youtube, Gmail and others. The recent figures show that to run these services Google use 260 million watts. That's enough energy to power a city with the population of 100,000 to 200,000.. That is a lot.

Knowing the power usage I would not like to be responsible
 for the maintenance of their servers..

I don't know about you but I was shocked reading about this, I mean I knew Google have a tonne of servers but I didn't imagine the power usage.. Google themselves don't seem to the think the figure is crazy because they think that their services actually reduce the amount of energy that us everyday people use. For example we would use the Google search engine instead of driving to the library to find out something.. I can sort of see what they mean, I'd like to see what other companies power usage is to compare Google's usage with.

Were you shocked seeing this figure? Do you think that Google's services help a lot of people reduce the amount of energy they use themselves?